Records Implicate Obama, Biden Administrations in Cover-up

In a press release unveiling newly declassified documents that confirm the existence of U.S.-funded biolabs operating across 30 countries, outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard chose her words with caution.

She never used the word “bioweapon.” She did not allege criminal wrongdoing or announce referrals to the Department of Justice. Yet that one word—bioweapon—seemed to hover over the entire statement.

Though she stopped short of making explicit accusations, the implications of the documents she released were unmistakable.

Tulsi Gabbard, who will be leaving the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to care for her ailing husband, is devoting her last days on the job to tearing aside the veil on secret U.S.-funded biolabs, and to warn that dangerous pathogens were being manipulated in these facilities around the world.

Gabbard released a trove of declassified records last Friday detailing U.S. funding of more than 120 biological laboratories across more than 30 countries—some dating back to the Soviet era. She said the documents validate concerns that were previously mocked as misinformation, and reveal a cover up at the highest levels of government.

“Until now, evidence regarding the full existence and funding of these laboratories had been knowingly withheld from the American people,” Gabbard said in a televised press release.

“The information surrounding the existence, history, locations and funding of these U.S.-funded biolabs has been intentionally covered up by powerful people, claiming that they do not exist. Anyone who says otherwise was accused of being foreign assets and traitors to America.”

The ODNI director said she was releasing what she called “new evidence” of these bio labs that “likely housed dangerous pathogens,” including 40 in Ukraine, with maps showing their locations.

She noted that some of the Ukrainian labs were particularly vulnerable because of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, but their existence had been intentionally concealed by previous administrations.

The documents, which were declassified in April but released just last week, make clear that the U.S. involvement has gone far beyond infrastructure. It has encompassed the training of Ukrainian scientists in researching infectious diseases, such as studies on highly pathogenic avian influenza, and funding this research.

In just one example, the slides highlight the Institute of Experimental and Clinical Veterinary Medicine in Kharkiv that is specifically described as “housing dangerous pathogens” and being exposed to security risks.

Except for Fox News and the New York Post which reported extensively on the explosive documents, most mainstream media have ignored the bombshell revelations.

Department of Defense Involvement

The newly declassified documents show that the labs are part of a sweeping U.S scientific and Department of Defense involvement that dates back to the Obama administration. (See Sidebar.)

The slides identify specific facilities and funding amounts. The Central Reference Laboratory at the Ukrainian Research Anti-Plague Institute in Odesa, for example, received more than $3.4 million in U.S. funding.

The Institute of Veterinary Medicine of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences received more than $2.1 million. Additional funding went to laboratories in Kherson and Zakarpattia.

The charts’ sweeping scope illustrates that the programs discussed in the document trove extended far beyond a few laboratories. They involved departments from public health, agriculture, academia, international development, and national security.

The network diagram included in the declassified material depicts multi-level government involvement that encompasses the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the CDC, the U.S. Army Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, the Naval Medical Research Center, the World Health Organization, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

The slides include several American higher education institutions, including the University of Florida, the University of Alaska Anchorage, Kansas State University, the University of Tennessee and the University of New Mexico, alongside Ukrainian institutions and other foreign organizations.

U.S. national security officials from the Biden administration had long dismissed claims about the biological research laboratories in Ukraine as “Russian propaganda.” Those claims fell apart after senior State Department official Victoria Nuland unexpectedly confirmed their existence at a 2022 Senate hearing under questioning by Senator Marco Rubio.

However, the Pentagon continues to insist that the research was lawful and unrelated to military objectives. After last week’s document release, that claim appears increasingly at odds with the evidence now in the public record.

Pentagon Funding Revealed

One declassified assessment from the ODNI trove focuses on a veterinary research laboratory in Kharkiv that received Pentagon funding through the Defense Department’s Biological Threat Reduction Program.

According to the assessment, the facility housed hundreds of samples of dangerous pathogens, including Brucella bacteria, which can cause a disease known as brucellosis. The document warned the lab could become a target of Russian propaganda efforts or be damaged, captured or otherwise compromised during the war.

Additional records, quoted by Fox News, detail U.S.-funded construction and upgrades at laboratories across Ukraine, including facilities in Odesa and western Ukraine. The documents identify engineering firm Black & Veatch as a major contractor, and show U.S. taxpayers spent between roughly $1.7 million and $3.5 million on individual laboratory projects.

Working Around the Biological Weapons Convention

Under the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention, 188 nations, including the United States, agreed to prohibit the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, and use of biological agents and toxins for hostile purposes.

This prohibition would encompass biological weapons programs as well as gain-of-function research intended to increase the transmissibility and virulence of pathogens.

According to DNI allegations, the Department of Defense (DoD) under the Obama and Biden administrations has skirted U.S. laws on these operations, re-labeling them in innocuous terms such as threat reduction, vaccine development, and pandemic avoidance. (See Sidebar)

Defenders of the biolabs maintain the facilities were part of public health and threat-reduction efforts designed to secure dangerous pathogens and prevent biological proliferation, rather than operate as biological weapons programs.

Even if this were true, Gabbard argues, the risk that such research could trigger a catastrophic leak as happened with Covid-19, or be exploited for military purposes should outweigh any of the touted benefits. She has blasted Biden administration officials for having lied about the existence of the biolabs.

“Despite the obvious potential for catastrophic outcomes such research can have, politicians, so-called health professionals like Dr. Fauci, and Biden administration officials lied to the American people about the existence of these biolabs, and threatened those who attempted to expose the truth,” Gabbard said in the televised press release.

“ODNI will continue to work closely with partners across the government to identify where these labs are and what pathogens they contain, to end dangerous gain-of-function research that threatens the health and wellbeing of the American people and people around the world,” she added.

Gabbard has issued instructions to the Intelligence Community calling for increased information gathering on these overseas laboratories and facilities. This directive has already provided new details on clinical trials that are underway at these facilities, she noted, “raising further ethical and security concerns.”

Demand for Transparency

In her video clip, Tulsi explained that after she was installed at ODNI, she turned agency resources toward collecting information about the biolabs.

“After months of searching through intelligence community holdings and files,” she said, “today I’m releasing new evidence of long-standing US government funding of more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries.”

Critics speculate that all or most of the 30 countries have lax regulations similar to Ukraine, as well as legacies of official corruption and long histories of dependency on USAID.

As opposed to simply routine bio-research, “many of these U.S. government-funded biolabs are currently engaged in research using hazardous and highly contagious pathogens, in some cases to include dangerous gain-of-function research, with very little visibility or oversight,” Gabbard emphasized.

The DNI’S statement follows her announcement last month that she had opened an investigation into 120 biological laboratories abroad that the U.S. government had allegedly funded for decades. She said she sought transparency as part of an effort to eliminate dangerous experiments with pathogens that have the potential to explode into pandemics.

Last month was not the first time she had sounded the alarm.

Back in 2022 as a private citizen, drawing on information she had acquired while serving in Congress, Gabbard had publicly accused the Biden administration of concealing the existence of biolabs in Ukraine and other foreign countries, and researching dangerous pathogens.

“There are 25 plus U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine, which, if breached, would release and spread deadly pathogens to the United States and the world, causing untold suffering and death,” Gabbard said in a 2022 podcast.

As quoted in Yated at the time, she called for the labs to be secured and the pathogens destroyed, emphasizing the biosecurity risks, and warning of possible outbreaks.

“Instead of covering this up,” she urged, “the Biden-Harris administration needs to work with Russia, Ukraine, the EU, the UN, NATO and all relevant parties to immediately implement a cease-fire in the vicinity of these labs until they’re secured and all these pathogens destroyed.”

Gabbard noted that in addition to the biolabs in Ukraine, “the United States funds over 100 such facilities around the world that are engaging in dangerous research, including gain of function similar to the lab in Wuhan.”

“After realizing how dangerous and vulnerable these labs are, they should have all been shut down two years ago,” Gabbard insisted. “But they have not been.”

In those days of intense media and government censorship, she drew ridicule for being “a conspiracy theorist.” Democrats and Biden administration spokesmen heaped scorn on her for “parroting Russian propaganda.”

Critics, such as then-Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, accused her of telling a “treasonous lie” and amplifying “Russian disinformation.” Still, she held her ground, insisting her information was authentic.

Pandora’s Box of Deadly Pathogens

Finally vindicated, Gabbard has transformed a subject once shunned as “misinformation” into a vital national security concern that has galvanized the U.S. intelligence community.

The documents the ODNI published last Friday confirm that more than 40 laboratories in Ukraine were built or supported through U.S. government funding.

The document lists the types of pathogens found in these facilities. Among them are “anthrax, tularemia, tuberculosis, Swine Fever, Newcastle Disease, hantavirus, MERS, SARS, Marburg, Ebola, Lassa, the Plague, Rickettsia,” to mention some of the deadliest ones.

Moscow has accused some of the Ukrainian research done in partnership with the U.S. of having been at the level of bio weapons work, the declassified files stated. The documents appear to support this allegation.

The modus operandi for those engineering the research appears to loosely follow a script: Make the virus more dangerous, then insist you were only trying to protect everyone from the dangerous virus you just created.

For example, a devastating but rare disease like Marburg (a close cousin to Ebola)—which spreads through contact with the fluid or feces of infected bats—can potentially be enhanced (through gain -of-function) so it can infect humans more easily. Scientists would then make a vaccine for this genetically engineered virus and call it “pandemic research.” The whole project is then redefined as vital for “public health.”

Restricted Funding for Gain-of-Function

Observers note that the timing of Gabbard’s document release reflects a broader shift in federal policy toward biological research, beginning with President Trump signing a May 2025 Executive Order (no.14292) restricting federal funding for gain-of-function research. The Order directed agencies to identify biological research activities that could pose risks to public health or national security.

The administration argued that research capable of increasing the transmissibility or lethality of pathogens required much greater scrutiny.

“Dangerous gain-of-function research on biological agents and pathogens has the potential to significantly endanger the lives of American citizens,” the Order reads. “If left unrestricted, its effects can include widespread mortality, an impaired public health system, disrupted American livelihoods, and diminished economic and national security.

“The Biden Administration allowed dangerous gain-of-function research within the United States with insufficient levels of oversight,” the Order noted.

In a statement to the press, Trump reasoned that Covid-19 had proved that dangerous pathogens “can leak out innocently, stupidly and incompetently, and half destroy the world.”

An explosive clause in Trump’s order detailing U.S. government funding for gain-of-function research “in China, Iran and other foreign countries” should have dominated headlines. Instead, the media largely ignored it.

In light of the explosive disclosures contained in the Gabbard files—revelations that expose the Pentagon and Department of Defense’s involvement in conducting the very same scandal-fraught research in Ukraine while working to conceal it—the media’s near-total silence comes as no great shock.

Despite years of silence and denials, the U.S.-funded biolab story is not going away. If the newly released documents are any indication, this is only the beginning. Additional disclosures are reportedly in the pipeline, and Americans would be wise to stay tuned.

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Obama Allegedly Led Effort to Build Ukraine Biolab

On March 9, 2022, a shocking article appeared in The National Pulse, a right-leaning online publication, titled, Deleted Web Pages Show Obama Led an Effort To Build a Ukraine-Based BioLab Handling ‘Especially Dangerous Pathogens’.

The web article recovered by The National Pulse revealed that former President Barack Obama spearheaded an agreement leading to the construction of biolabs handling “especially dangerous pathogens” in Ukraine.

The news came on the same day that Biden official Victoria Nuland admitted to the U.S. Senate, under questioning by then Senator Marco Rubio, that the American government was concerned about biological research facilities falling into Russian hands as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Originally posted on June 18th, 2010, the article “Biolab Opens in Ukraine” details how Obama, while serving as an Illinois Senator, helped negotiate a deal to build a level-3 bio-safety lab in the Ukrainian city of Odessa.

The article, which also highlighted the work of former Senator Dick Lugar, was additionally included in Issue No. 818 of the United States Air Force (USAF) Counter-proliferation Center’s Outreach Journal.

“Lugar said plans for the facility began in 2005 when he and then-Senator Barack Obama entered a partnership with Ukrainian officials. Lugar and Obama also helped coordinate efforts between the U.S and Ukrainian researchers that year in an effort to study and help prevent avian flu,” explained author Tina Redlup.

A 2011 report from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Anticipating Biosecurity Challenges explained how the Odessa-based laboratory in whose creation then Senator Barak Obama played a pivotal role, “is responsible for the identification of especially dangerous biological pathogens.”

“This laboratory was reconstructed and technically updated through a cooperative agreement between the United States Department of Defense and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine that started in 2005. The collaboration focuses on preventing the spread of technologies and pathogens that can be used in the development of biological weapons,” the report continues.

“The updated laboratory serves as Interim Central Reference Laboratory with a depozitarium (pathogen collection). According to Ukrainian regulations, it has a permit to work with both bacteria and viruses of the first and second pathogenic groups,” explains the report.

Among the viruses the lab studied were Ebola and “viruses of pathogencity group II.”

Weeks later, the National Pulse broke another shocking story: Hunter Biden’s investment firm, Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners, was allegedly a lead financial backer of Metabiota, a pandemic-tracking company that collaborated directly with Ukrainian laboratories on isolating deadly pathogens, funded in part by Obama’s Department of Defense.

Metabiota received an $18.4 million government grant, with a portion specifically itemized for Ukraine research.

Lighting a Match to a Powder Keg

It doesn’t take much to add all of this up. Ukraine is at the forefront of the US Department of Defense’s Biological Threat Reduction Program, which essentially is another form of a Wuhan lab, which means the US DoD is researching bioweapons right across the border from Russia.

These bioweapon research facilities in Ukraine appear to be an existential danger to Russia. Why would Moscow want to take a chance with NATO on its doorstep and the threat of bioweapons?

None of these factors excuse the brutality of Putin’s invasion or the devastating toll inflicted by the Russian military on Ukraine. Yet critics contend that the Department of Defense’s so-called “threat reduction” programs in Eastern Europe may have contributed to the tensions that ultimately helped set the stage for the conflict.

If the objective was to gain an advantage in the race to control or counter biological threats, then America’s willingness to engage in such high-risk research may itself have served as a factor underlying the Russia-Ukraine war.

In that sense, a policy supposedly intended to enhance security may have accomplished the very opposite–instead lighting a match to the powder keg.